Mitsubishi Motors to invest US$600 million to build new plant in Indonesia – new MPV set to be developed

Mitsubishi Motors has announced that will be investing US$600 million to build a new assembly plant in Indonesia. The spend will also involve the development of a new vehicle for the market, according to a report by Reuters.

The new plant, which will be located at an industrial park east of Jakarta, will have an annual production capacity of 160,000 vehicles, with the possibility of expanding this to 240,000 units in the future.

Production is set to begin in the first half of 2017, the company’s chief executive officer Osamu Masuko told the news agency. The plant will build two commercial vehicles as well as a new eight-seater MPV. Around US$250 million of the company’s US$600 million investment will be assigned for the development of the new vehicle.

No mention was made as to the model that will be developed, but speculation is that it will be a lower-segment MPV competing with the likes of the Toyota Avanza and Honda Mobilio. The company launched the fifth-gen Delica D:5 in CBU form last week at the ongoing IIMS 2014 in Jakarta, but the new development is unlikely to be along those lines.

The automaker is planning to build 80,000 units of the new MPV annually, and export 20,000 to countries around the region, including Thailand and the Philippines, the report adds.

The company currently has a production plant in the country, but that one builds commercial vehicles, and is looking at the introduction of the new factory to expand its market share in the republic from eight percent currently to around 13%. The new facility will make Indonesia the automaker’s second largest ASEAN production base after Thailand.

Anthony Lim believes that nothing is better than a good smoke and a car with character, with good handling aspects being top of the prize heap. Having spent more than a decade and a half with an English tabloid daily never being able to grasp the meaning of brevity or being succinct, he wags his tail furiously at the idea of waffling - in greater detail - about cars and all their intrinsic peculiarities here.

Yet another blunder by the idiots at MAI. Not only have we lost billions, every year, we keep on losing billions in investments. RM2 billion just lost like that and maybe about 30,000 jobs also lost just from one company alone, Mitsubishi

Car companies do not want to invest in Malaysia anymore because they are fed up of the crony AP system which is strongly supported by MAI and its CEO, Madani Sahari.

Madani Sahari is a shameless man. He is used by the government to confuse the people with heavy duty analysis and charts. He has no dignity. Malaysians not interested in the 1% to 3% and all that. We want the below 3 issues looked into. After all we are paying 3x the car prices compared to world prices for the same car. And all this is caused by the AP cronies in Malaysia.

Why no action on the AP boys who are minting billions at the expense of the 30 million Malaysians suffering with high car prices?

Madani got no telur to tackle. The MAI guys are paid very high pay to confuse the rakyat with all sorts of analysis and charts but the AP system as well as crony practice, they don’t bother.

Our hard earned money is spent to support the fools at MAI. But no result. The last big paper/NAP they were to scared to touch on the AP Kings. Kenapa takut? The AP Kings are the main cause car prices in Malaysia is so expensive and collapse of our potential trillion dollar car industry.

Please Madanai and MAI, have some guts to serve the people of Malaysia and not just your own pockets.

MAI love Come out with analysis and charts, but nothing will be done. Remember MAI is the Government and the Government is MAI. So, it is a drama for the rakyat.

It is solely because of Mahathir and his AP kawan kawan, as well as inaction by Bogus MAI that for 30 years, 30 million people in Malaysia suffer. Everybody’s biggest payment per month is their cars as we are paying overpriced cars.

You see, in the 80s or even in the early 90s, you can get a brand new Nissan 130Y or a Toyota Corolla for RM20,000. Now, the same car is RM139,000.

In truth, the past 30 years, car prices have come down a lot globally and have NOT gone up due to inflation. It has come down due to economies of scale achieved by car companies. This is proven by the fact that you can get a brand new purely Japan made top spec Toyota Camry 2.5 with 9 airbags in the US for US$22,000. That is about RM60,000. The normal B segment car like the Almera is sold in the US for US$9,999. (RM30,000). Mind you, this is after Toyota and Nissan of the US has made their margin and profits and the US government has collected taxes and duties from Nissan and Toyota. The direct from factory prices is far cheaper. UMW will get the above 2.5 Camry for US$15,000 from their principal in Japan. As our Camry is CKD, the price is even lower than that.

So, in actual fact, most Malaysians can enjoy cheap and reasonable cars but because of the AP failure, all the other car prices have been raised up tremendously to protect Proton, Mahathir’s AP cronies and the fat cats at Bogus MAI. Malaysians have already suffered so much. For 30 years, 30 million people suffer so much. We struggle paying for our high car prices all because of one man’s dream of benefiting his friends and relatives through the AP system. and the inaction by Bogus MAI

The AP system as well as inaction by bogus MAI, it has also cost us hundreds of billions in ringgit in investments from car companies who moved to Thailand and Indonesia. Car companies got fed up with Malaysia’s MITI for protecting Proton and telling other companies what to price their cars. They got sick and tired of the AP system and how genuine brands cannot get enough APs to import their cars in (like Mercedes, BMW and Honda).

They thought that if they set up their brands and plants in Malaysia, they knew they had to share the pool of APs with the cronies and they knew 90% of all APs go to the cronies. They all moved their operations to Thailand making it the AutoCity of the world.

Recently GM announced that they rolled out already 1 million cars from Thailand. Imagine if GM was in Malaysia and we taxed GM RM10,000 per car. Calculate that with 1 million cars. Just from GM alone, we lost Billions in USD. Imagine what will the amount be from other car companies if they had set up in Malaysia?

Because of Mahathir and his AP system as well as inaction by Bogus MAI, we lost hundreds of billion of ringgit in investment and trillions of ringgit from jobs lost. If Malaysia was the autocity of Asia, hundreds of thousands of jobs would have been created for Malaysians. We lost all that. Trillions of Ringgit and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Now, Thailand is benefiting from this trillions lost.

So, in summary, the 30 PEKEMA members have solely caused Malaysia to lose trillions in investments. What have they done? Nothing.
The AP companies also don’t employ many people.

Yes you read it clearly. Only about 10 people working. That includes the 4 Bangladeshi guys whose job is to wash the cars.

Go around KL and Jalan Genting Klang and see, all the AP cronies have hardly 10 people working for them each (including non bumi boss, non bumi salesman and secretary).

Remember one thing, other than Naza, each AP company have hardly 10 people working. So, if you do the maths, about 30 AP companies x 10 people = 300 people. Majority of which (98%) are non bumi. Defeats the whole purpose of the AP system to help the Bumiputera to venture into the car business.

Madani is protecting 300 people vs 30 million Malaysians suffer?

No need to wait end of this year. Look at this as a crime. Abolish it today itself. Abolish the AP system now Madani. It is causing too much hardships on the 30 million Malaysians!

Today is another example of how we just lost US600 million (RM2 billion). We also lost about 30,000 jobs that Mitsubishi would employ. Maybe about RM10 billion lost in pay packet alone in the next few years.

car manufacturer looking for cheaper labour cost + cheaper cost of living + better tax structure. They can build the plant here, but still need to import more workers from indonesia or other asean region. So better setup a plant over there la.

If given a choice between CKD and CBU, quite a lot of people would opt for CBU. Seen and heard enough to know that. There’s that preconception that locally made products are inferior in quality. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s just prejudice.

Wow. A lot of idiots in the Paul Tan comments sections. No surprises there. Never occurred to them that we are a middle-income economy unlike Indonesia.
Even if Mitsu opens up a plant in Malaysia, it will either pay below minimum wage salaries to our citizens or import more indons or banglas to work in the factory, as pointed out by the gentleman above.
This is why Malaysia will never escape the middle-income trap! Idiots clamoring for foreign companies to open low paying factories that does not benefit us in the long run.

To the so called expert, plz analyse more deeply on how it will affect our country as a whole…eventhough they employ foreigner, this ppl will spend their money here for essential things, food, etc, and we also earn taxes from this company..And they still need to employ local for high skill jobs, such as management, administrative, executives and so on..i think, at the end, we still earn more…

I think the most serious problem affecting us is , the people really cant differentiate rights & wrongs, logic or illogical thing…only think about ego…shiok sendiri ego!!! Watever things also can give excuse!! sigh…

Indonesia or Thailand are the natural choice for car makers even..if our tax regime and incentives on par..its because..(i) abundant labour (ii) you pay only a third of labour cost there compare to bolehland (iii) both countries have much bigger population and market (250 mil in Indonesia, 80 mil in Thailand) (iv) workers skill higher and level of technology one step higher (v) workers there are not fussy like here (too demanding) (vi) endurance – workers there can work from 7 to 7 with no extra cost….cost of living there for three months equivalent to one month here… (vii) easier for companies to make money (good or bad) there rather than here…

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